"Could you send me the contract for the Leeds site?"
A client's finance team is preparing for their audit. They email their account manager asking for the current contract for one site, copies of the last six months of bills for three others and confirmation of when the main contract ends. The next day, their facilities manager asks the same account manager for the status of a billing query.
Each request means finding documents on the shared drive, in the bill tracker and in the CRM, zipping them up and sending them. None of it is difficult. All of it takes time that should go on renewals and reviews.
Why document requests never stop
Clients' own teams change and forget where they filed things. Auditors, finance teams, facilities managers and site managers all need different pieces of information at different times.
- Clients do not keep complete copies of contracts and bills.
- Different people at the client ask for different things.
- Your documents are spread across several systems.
- The status of queries and renewals is only known by your team.
- Every request goes through one busy account manager.
Time lost to fetching and sending
Account managers become document retrieval services. The time adds up across a book of clients, and it peaks at the worst moments: client year ends and renewal periods.
Documents sent by email are also hard to control. Old versions circulate, the wrong document is attached, and there is no record of what was sent to whom.
The requests also arrive unevenly. A client's new finance director wants the full history of every site in their first month; an auditor wants specific bills by a deadline; a site manager wants to know who their supplier is because a meter engineer has turned up. Each one interrupts whatever the account manager was doing, and each one assumes an immediate answer.
A portal drawn from your own records
We build a client portal on top of the records your consultancy already keeps.
- Each client logs in to see their sites and meters, with current supplier, contract and end date for each.
- Contracts, supplier confirmations and letters of authority are available to download, taken from your document store.
- Bills are listed by site and period, with validation status shown if you offer it.
- Monthly reports are published to the portal as they are released.
- Open queries show their status, without the internal notes.
- Permissions are set by you: a client's finance team may see everything, a site manager only their site.
- Every download is logged, so you know what each client has accessed.
| Request | By email | Through the portal |
|---|---|---|
| Copy of a contract | Found and emailed by the account manager | Downloaded by the client |
| Bills for a site | Collected and zipped | Listed by site and period |
| Contract end date | Looked up in the CRM | Shown on each site |
| Query status | Asked for and explained | Status shown |
| Who saw what | Unknown | Download log |
What clients see is set by you. The portal only shows what you choose to publish.
Account managers back on account work
When the client's finance team needs documents for their audit, they log in and download them. The facilities manager checks the query status herself. The account manager hears about it only if something is missing, which usually means there is a real question to answer.
Clients see a consultancy with its records in order, which matters at renewal time.
It also helps when people change at the client. A new finance director or facilities manager can be given a login and see the whole picture on day one, rather than starting with a round of emails asking what the consultancy does and where things are.
Are you a document retrieval service?
- Clients ask for copies of contracts and bills regularly.
- Requests take account managers away from renewals.
- Documents are spread across several systems.
- Clients ask about query and renewal status by email.
- You have no record of what documents clients have been sent.